Dear colleagues,
I would like to thank the Danish Presidency for putting the European Ocean Pact on the agenda today.
The ocean is Europes lifeline.
It offers immense potential for a sustainable blue economy, food security, and prosperity for our coastal communities. A healthy and biodiverse ocean is our ally in fighting climate change. And it is key to our security.
Yet, the ocean faces serious threats from pollution, climate change, and overexploitation of marine resources.
Urgent coordinated action is needed to address the pressures on our ocean stemming from this triple planetary crisis.
And the European Ocean Pact, which President von der Leyen presented in June at the UN Ocean Conference in Nice, provides for such coordinated action. The Pact establishes a single strategic framework for all EU ocean-related policies. It aims at effective governance of our ocean in all its dimensions.
It consolidates, for the first time, all EU ocean policies, ensuring coherence across all areas.
This Pact is not merely symbolic. It is a concrete action plan, announcing 30 key flagship actions and referencing more than 90 Commission initiatives.
In her letter of intent to the European Parliament and the Council, which accompanies her latest State of the Union speech, President von der Leyen highlights the future Ocean Act as a key priority for 2026. The Ocean Act will take the revision of the Maritime Spatial Planning Directive as a starting point. It will simplify existing legislation, align sectoral and environmental policies, reference relevant targets and facilitate their coherent and effective implementation. It will improve quality, implementation and coherence, without imposing unnecessary burden.
To accompany and support the implementation of the Ocean Pact, we will soon set up a High-Level Ocean Board.
And we will also create an Ocean Pact Dashboard to monitor and report in a transparent way the progress on the Pacts relevant indicators and targets.
The protection of the marine environment is a common goal of various EU laws and policies – including fisheries, maritime planning, maritime transport, tourism, as well as our international obligations. We rely on the ecosystem-based approach to manage our activities that impact the ocean.
Many of these laws and policies have been developed separately and there is scope to enhance coherence.
In particular, the links between Maritime Spatial Planning and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive need to be strengthened.
As announced in the Ocean Pact and the Water Resilience Strategy, and under the lead of my colleague Commissioner Roswall, the Commission will revise the Marine Strategy Framework Directive to make this EU law stronger, clearer, simpler, easier to implement.
We also need to better integrate the climate angle – as climate change shapes our coasts and seas, with lasting effects on marine life, habitats, and the human activities that depend on them.
The revision of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive will be carefully orchestrated with the upcoming Ocean Act.
Dear colleagues,
Shaping the Ocean Pact was a collective exercise.
The same collective effort is now needed to implement it, and this is why it is so important that various Council formations contribute to the discussions, and that we all share the ownership for this Pact and its vision, and ensure a coherent implementation.
I look forward to hearing your views, to better understand the challenges you are facing today in ensuring good environmental status of our ocean and how the Commission can support you and the relevant stakeholders further in improving the marine environment.
